


the comfort in being sad

by notthelasttime



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Denial of Feelings, Getting Together, Heavy Drinking, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pining, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, implied past suicide attempt, just.. general discussions/implications of suicidal thoughts and attempts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthelasttime/pseuds/notthelasttime
Summary: “You’re mad,” Dimitri says. Stating facts with barely any intonation but Felix knows him well enough to know when he’s bothered and pretending not to be, and Felix is just tired enough to let his face slip, to let his mouth twist and for so many unspoken things to try grasping for the surface.He bites them back down and says with defined condescension, “I like you better when you’re sober.”
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

_come get ur boyfriend hes drunk_

There are any number of ways Felix could respond to the text from Sylvain. _Fuck you_ comes to mind first, followed by, _How drunk?_ It’s exactly 12:43 which means Dimitri will have had plenty of time to fuck himself up, yet it’s not so late that Felix isn’t surprised he hasn’t come stumbling home on his own yet. Not that he keeps tabs on the time every night. Not that he cares what kind of self destructive tendencies Dimitri has been keeping because this is his new normal. And if Dimitri won’t help himself, Felix doesn’t understand what he’s expected to do about it.

_If he wants to come home he can drag himself back anytime-_

_Maybe you’re hell bent on self destruction but you don’t have to help Dimitri do it too-_

_I thought you were keeping an eye on him tonight-_

_If he wants help maybe Dimitri can ask for it his damn self-_

_I’m not his keeper. He can drink all he wants-_

_He’s not my boyfriend_ , is what Felix settles on, right before grabbing his keys and jacket and heading for the door. The walk over isn’t particularly long, but Felix can hope that in the time it takes to make his way there some of the irrational irritation within him will subside.

It doesn’t.

The party’s long wound down by the time Felix gets there, but for Sylvain and Claude that only means that their place is no longer packed full to the point of limited mobility. There’s still music, only turned down low instead of blasting, and plenty of people milling around, sitting, talking, still making drinks and having those deep conversations that often only seem to happen at 3am after too much tequila when the initial ruckus has died down and everyone is only just kind of loud and drunk instead of _fucking loud_ and _shitfaced_. He can recognize maybe less than half the people there by name, and Sylvain is nowhere to be found, but that’s fine. Better, maybe, given the kind of venom Felix feels himself filling with, and the place is only so big. Dimitri won’t be hard to find, so long as he hasn’t locked himself in a bathroom to blow chunks.

He walks past the loveseat where Annette and Mercie are curled up together, deep in conversation and oblivious to the outside world. They don’t say hello and that suits Felix fine. He doesn’t plan on staying long enough to talk, and it’s just as well because he spots Dimitri then, slumped against the wall next to the couch, with forearms resting on bent knees; watching.

Watching with a glassy look in his eyes that’s so very far away, because the booze has mellowed him out and quieted whatever demons he thinks need quieting. It’s not always like this, muted and subdued. Dimitri would rather shove and hide any emotion he might feel that doesn’t pass as pleasant, let it fester and rot deep inside him, growing, building, until it all comes rushing out at once in something violent and ugly. Explosive. Something none of them know how to handle. They see it sometimes, on nights when drinking makes him angry or miserable instead of mellow. There are times when it boils over just enough that they can all see it, raw and naked, uncomfortable because Dimiti doesn’t want them to know it’s there. The septic wound he’s trying to hide and wish away and tell them all _it’s fine, it’s fine, I’m fine_. He’s the only person Felix knows that can turn selflessness into honed self destruction. 

Tonight is not one of those visceral nights. The placid look on his face could almost pass for a smile.

But he’s clearly had too much. Again.

“Come on,” Felix says, resisting the urge to kick Dimitri to get him up, to get his attention because he’s clearly still staring 5 miles deep into outer space. 

“I didn’t think you were coming tonight,” Dimitri says eventually, dragging his eyes up. Slow, slurred. And here Sylvain had promised it was all gonna be _just fine_.

_Me and Claude will be there Felix, it’s fine Felix, you worry too much. What are we supposed to do, not invite him? Not like that would make things worse. Why don’t you come too? You could use some loosening up, having a drink with Dimitri wouldn’t kill ya._

“I didn’t,” Felix says, despite the contrary. The fact that he’s standing there now in the middle of the room in the midst of a half-dying party. “I’m only here to get you. Now get up.”

The kind thing to do would be to offer Dimitri a hand as he struggles to his feet after too many dazed moments staring up. But Felix will give no one ammunition to call him kind, least of all when it comes to Dimitri. Still, when he leans and sways on his feet, when Felix sees just how bad off it is, barely keeping his balance while standing still, he finds he’s offering Dimitri his shoulder. An offer Dimitri takes, so natural like he doesn’t even have to consider the oddity of it. 

He’s not expecting Dimitri’s full weight on him. Not expecting to sway under it for a moment, like all the air’s been knocked out of him, when Dimitri is stumbling close, body on fire, long hair tickling Felix’s neck and the suffocating smell of booze on Dimitri’s breath. Maybe when they get outside the crisp air will sober Dimitri up, maybe help him stand a little straighter, hold some of his own weight. Felix hopes for it with desperation, not asking why he’s so desperate for there to be that safe buffer of space between them again as he drags Dimitri with him and makes to leave.

“Hey, I didn’t see you come in!”

Sylvain. Plenty drunk himself and Claude with him, so casually close in a way that Felix has come to notice happens more often than not. But Claude’s arm around Sylvain’s shoulder is to touch for the sake of being touched. A stark contrast from Dimitri and Felix standing in front of them, the crutch and support of necessity. Mirror images with opposite intent. Felix scowls.

“Oh come on, what’s that look for?”

 _You were supposed to be watching him_.

He wants so badly to blame it all on Sylvain. Felix has never been one to shy from his own faults or taking ownership of them, but when it comes to Dimitri, it’s so, so much easier to point fingers than deal with the guilt himself. 

“Nothing,” Felix snaps, and tries to brush past them, as much as he can with the hulk of a stumbling Dimitri laying heavy on him, showing no indication of following their conversation. 

“Oh come on Felix-”

“Leave him,” Claude says, and Felix finds he wants to smack that knowing smirk off of Claude’s face, “he’s cranky tonight.”

At least Dimitri’s dead weight keeps Felix in place and prevents him from outright throttling Claude. Even more so when, keeping eye contact, he dips close to Sylvain’s neck, an intimate gesture on full display and Felix can’t help but think of Dimitri leaning in and doing the same to him. A mirror. But like mirrors everything between them is backwards.

“He’s always cranky,” Sylvain says, too drunk and giddy to be bothered by whatever unpleasant reaction plays out on Felix’s face, so he keeps dragging Dimitri to the door without another comment. Talking to any of them like this, with how they are tonight, would be a waste of time anyway. Claude’s laugh echoes behind him, still echoing on the inside of his head after they make it outside, and the night air is a balm on his overheating face. Maybe it’s his imagination, but it feels like Dimitri gains his footing a little better too. Maybe it’s just that Felix doesn’t feel so suffocated under Claude’s eyes anymore. Maybe it's because it’s cold enough tonight that the heat coming off Dimitri’s body doesn’t threaten to overwhelm him any more. The smallest favor he can ask for is that they walk back to the apartment together in silence, and by some miracle it’s a favor Dimitri grants him. 

No small effort gets them up three flights of stairs without careening back down to the bottom, and when Felix needs to fish in his pockets for his keys, Dimitri needs to lean against the wall for support instead. 

Felix wants to dump him in front of the door and be done with it. He wants to go to bed and not have to see or speak to Dimitri for a very long time. He lets Dimitri fall back against his shoulder and takes him to his room, brings him over to the edge of his bed. 

The way Dimitri struggles with the laces of his boots is borderline pathetic. 

“I’m not undressing you,” Felix all but snarls, layers on layers of anger and frustration hiding what he might really feel, watching Dimitri fall apart at the seams. But now he’s caught the attention of the beast, and Dimitri looks up, eyes falling somewhere over Felix’s shoulder, stuttering to keep looking where he wants.

“You’re mad,” Dimitri says. Stating facts with barely any intonation but Felix knows him well enough to know when he’s bothered and pretending not to be, and Felix is just tired enough to let his face slip, to let his mouth twist and for so many unspoken things to try grasping for the surface. 

He bites them back down and says with defined condescension, “I like you better when you’re sober.”

Back down the head goes, hair falling back like a curtain around his face, and Felix can see clearly where the blonde gets darker at the roots. It’ll get darker still with the oncoming winter. Dirty blonde, the shade of his lashes, just a little bit darker to make his eyes stand out.

“I’m fairly certain you don’t like me at all.”

It may as well be a slap, but Felix is too stunned to retort. 

He hates Dimitri.

He doesn’t hate Dimitri.

He can’t stand him sometimes but Felix is fairly certain if Dimitri were to ever… if he-

“Do you ever....” Dimitri sighs. Trails off, and his head tilts all the way back, eyes glazed and whatever thought he was going to speak is bitten back. Like so much between them. Sometimes Felix wants to shake him until all his secrets spill out because Dimitri does a good job of pretending to be open while he squirrels everything important away somewhere hidden. And his shoulders are still slumped and hunched, and his legs are too long for the edge of the bed and Felix hates how, for such a large man, he always looks like he’s curling in on himself these days. Like if he tries hard enough he can make himself small. It’s infuriating. It’s charming.

Felix says, “Go to bed.”

He doesn’t know what Dimitri’s thinking when he stares. He doesn’t know what Dimitri wants to say when he says, “Felix…” but lets his voice trail off. In hindsight he will think he should have left the bedroom before the situation made this awkward turn. He should have gone back to his own room to simmer on unbidden feelings that he was hardly in the mood to deal with. He should have at least put more space between them so that Dimitri couldn’t reach out and grab his forearm so easily to stop him from leaving. He shouldn’t have leaned down when Dimitri gave him a gentle tug.

It’s so close to being a mistake. 

From the way that Dimitri sways and grips onto Felix for support, the way he can’t seem to look where he wants because there’s a good chance his whole world is spinning. Just not spinning for the same reasons Felix’s is, because when he leans down, Dimitri leans forward and lets their lips meet. Soft enough to be accidental, but it’s not accidental at all with the way Felix can’t breathe and his heart’s beating fast enough to make him dizzy and uncertain. Especially when Dimitri tilts his head and parts his lips so slightly. No, it's not an accident. It’s a kiss.

And with it, the rancid undercurrent of too much alcohol still swimming in Dimitri’s mouth and in his blood.

Dimitri pulls back first. First to dive in, first to back away, hair more in his face than usual and eyes still nearly closed. If he’s embarrassed he doesn’t show it. If he’s thinking about how this could irrevocably change their entire friendship the same way Felix is, he doesn’t show that either.

Felix looks at him and all he can see is that Dimitri is drunk.

“Goodnight,” he says, and then slumps back on his bed leaving Felix standing there, dazed.

* * *

Six months.

Six months ago Felix thought he’d be in Dagda now, some exclusive limited exchange program, touting the importance of experiencing other cultures, building ties, broadening horizons. Dagda was as good a place as any. Dagda had plenty of appeal outside the apparent honor of being one of the few selected to go. His father could trouble himself with the accomplishment of it. Felix just wanted to get out.

There had long been the undercurrent in his blood, a compulsion to just… go. Be somewhere else that wasn’t here, and sometimes to be someone else that wasn’t him, but that second urge never lasted long. If anything Felix would grasp tight around the neck of his own identity, with more determination every time he could hear the echo of his father’s voice. _When Glenn was your age… Glenn was already…. Glenn, Glenn, Glenn_.

He wasn’t Glenn. One of these days his father would have to realize that.

Felix was Felix. And Felix was full of too many unspoken thoughts and pent-up frustrations, but he knew who he was. His pinpointed interests, his moderate passions, his internal moral code that maybe other people, like Sylvain couldn’t puzzle out but it made perfect sense to him. And he thought that maybe, some time away from the mess that had become Garreg Mach he could learn something for himself. Because for as much as he switched his major, dropped classes and signed up for other things instead, it felt like nothing could keep his interest.

So Dagda. With all its old battlegrounds and historic buildings and a culture so unlike his own. He didn’t think anyone would miss him much and he wouldn’t be gone that long anyway. 

He filled out the application, watched the snow melt and the trees start budding and then the acceptance letter came and Felix reserved his spot without a second guess or reason to hesitate.

He thought spring was supposed to make things better, not worse. 

Six months.

Six months since Dimitri tried to hurt himself.

Felix dropped the exchange program.


	2. Chapter 2

Felix doesn’t sleep.

He doesn’t think or let himself dwell on what’s happened that night even if, in blank absence his fingers find their way to his mouth, tracing over the shape of his lips, like maybe he could feel it if something had changed.

It’s 3 A.M. when, still sleepless, in forced, adamant denial, he hears Dimitri stumble out of his room and to the toilet. Not a moment too soon from the sounds that follow, and even if Felix is thinking, it’s no more than you deserve, idiot, he can’t quite summon the same venom he felt when he got the text from Sylvain. Sylvain- who now can bear the weight of his fury for not cutting Dimitri off when he said he would. Or else he can turn it all inward at himself. For getting involved again when he promised he wouldn’t. He should have let consequences play out as they did instead of caving, showing up to try and clean Dimitri up again. There’s more to it than he can ever admit, but the part Felix clings to is self preservation. He knows he can’t keep doing this without snapping. He knows he doesn’t have the patience or the kindness in him to deal with his mess of a friend when he won’t help himself, and if they keep going on like this their relationship will become more damaged than it already is. Perhaps even shattered to a point beyond repair.

He doesn’t  _ hate _ Dimitri, he just…

He needs to get out of the apartment. 

Judging from the continuous retching from the bathroom Dimitri won’t notice he’s gone, and the sore and angry part of him that won’t go away or stay quiet wishes, maybe, that Dimitri might panic a little the next morning, when he realizes he’s in the apartment alone.

There’s any place he could be, anywhere he can go, this time of limbo-morning, but he’s too tired for the 24 hour gym and too raw to deal with any of his and Dimitri’s usual friends. He doesn’t  _ want _ his life to revolve around someone else, and he doesn’t want to have to talk about what happened. So he pulls out his phone and texts the one person he knows will still be awake and willing to deal with him being sullen and quiet.

_ You in the studio? _

Bernadetta takes less than 30 seconds to reply, and Felix thinks he’s probably not the only one having a rough night.

_ Yes. Bring coffee. _

* * *

The on campus studio building wasn’t particularly large or well funded, but it offered free space for art majors any time inspiration struck and an escape from close quarters with careless roommates. Bernadetta had paintings ruined or smeared on more than one occasion, too upset to do anything about it but retreat to Felix, all worked up and distressed but refusing to say anything about it. Typical. He knows she’s sweet and skittish and quick to blame herself for any failings, but she’s also got a quiet way about her and a refusal to pry even when he’s clearly upset. It’s what he needs.

His hands are full with two cups of coffee when he makes it over. Choices are limited with the odd hour, leaving nothing but the 7-11 nearby as an option, but Felix has been here before. Vanilla hazelnut for Bernie, topped off with plenty of cream and sugar to sustain her sweet tooth, and plain dark roast for himself. He was more concerned with staying awake than drinking something sickly-sweet because he knew that tired minds led to wandering thoughts and loose lips. He didn’t plan on spilling any secrets tonight, no matter the kind of doe-eyes Bernadetta shot at him. 

Then again, he didn’t  _ plan _ on Dimitri smacking a kiss on him either. He would like nothing more than to get it back in control

Bernadetta’s hunched over a drafting table, hair a mess, face pressed too close to the thick, texture paper in front of her. Here for the long haul, from what Felix sees, another full night of work without company, while everyone else was out partying and drinking. Everyone but her and Felix, perhaps, and it makes him pause to think about their strange similarities, held in such different casings. Neither of them can make friends easily. Both of them so often prefer to be alone. 

“Here,” he says without greeting, making Bernie jump and he feels bad enough to grimace. He could have fucked up her painting on accident, but judging by her face when she turns around, wide eyes zeroing directly in on the coffee in his hand, he guesses there was no harm done. 

“Don’t you have a life?” he asks her, feeling broody but even he knows the words don’t hold any kind of sting, “it’s the weekend and you’re cooped up in here-” he waves a hand in her direction, “ _ -painting _ .”

Bernadetta is unfazed. She lifts the plastic lid off her coffee and breathes in deep, momentarily transported to some place of calm that Felix wishes he could reach. 

“You’re here with me,” she says, taking a sip, “so what does that say about you?” She’s blinking big eyes at him innocently, so much different from when they first met, and he knows at the first sign of someone she doesn’t know she’ll still run off and disappear. But the newfound confidence to tease, to put up with his sullen barbs. He hates that it’s growing on him.

“Rough night?” she asks, innocent still, and Felix knows she won’t prod him with it if he doesn’t want to talk. He rubs his face, taking a seat on one of the abandoned stools near her desk. He’s silent, and she lets him be, turning back to her painting, looking over what she left off.

The soft scratch of a pencil fills the room, quietly soothing, as Bernadetta gets back to work. Either Felix will talk or he won’t, but she knows him well enough by now to know that it’ll be his call to make in the end. There’s a part of him, some small and secret part that wants and wishes, selfishly, that Dimitri could learn to read him in all the same ways. 

Instead they’re stuck in perpetual misunderstandings and he makes Felix so angry, but  _ he _ …

“How did you-”

Felix cuts himself off. The sound of the pencil stops but Bernie doesn’t turn around. She gives him space. She lets him breathe. Sometimes he misses the nervous Bernadetta chatter, the non stop oversharing when she was still anxious around him because it meant he never had to open his mouth and ask. 

“All that stuff with your dad,” he says quietly after a moment and stares at Bernadetta’s back as she goes uncharacteristically still, “how do you live with something like that?”

Felix knows loss. He knows it so well, knows the sharp pain and the long burn of it, but he had buckled down and bulled forward. Somehow. He can’t pretend to know how to cope with anything but he looks at Dimitri and the way he crumbles, seams splitting open, everything spilling out and making a mess, and Felix is at enough of a loss to do nothing but feel angry. He doesn’t know how to help. He doesn’t think he can. Feelings of uselessness only compound in him and make everything worse.

Bernadetta has turned to watch him, head tilted and thoughtful, still tense but no longer ready to feel, since she realized he’s not here to grill her about her own past pain. Just wants to know how to move forward. If someone even can.

“I don’t- um,” Bernadetta stops short, biting her lip and chewing through whatever words are getting tossed around in her head. “I don’t know that I am. At least, not all that well. I mean…”

He doesn’t mean to put her on the spot, but Felix sees a stark contrast, one that he’s been trying to puzzle out. She’s got no shortage of neurotic behaviors disguised as silly quirks, and self deprecation always flows so easy from her lips. She’s also not getting black out drunk every night. She’s not stumbling through the days like a zombie. And as far as Felix knows, she never tried to-

“Why are you asking?” It’s often easier for Bernadetta to spin things around and take the attention off herself. “I mean I know what happened with- oh, um…”

Glenn.

She doesn’t want to say his name, but she knows. Everyone knows. Bernadetta has the good graces not to get on him about it, knowing it’s a blacked-out topic, never to be discussed. “But I, um… well I didn’t think you…”

“It’s not about me,” Felix says, despite himself. He should stop now, while he can before he says too much or gives himself away. “I just-”

Air hisses out of his mouth. He just  _ what, he just what _ . 

“I don’t know how to stop somebody from falling apart.”

Bernadetta’s gaze, a little sad, a little stricken, makes him realize he said it out loud. She’s back to being thoughtful, and when she speaks, she speaks slow.

“Sometimes… it’s too much. And we don’t know where to start when we know there’s something wrong. Sometimes we don’t want to acknowledge how bad we let things get, so we pretend nothing’s wrong.”

Felix opens his mouth to speak, but Bernie cuts him off with a short shake of her head. 

“You can’t fix somebody else for them. None of us can, and I know you Felix. I know you’re nicer than you pretend, but I know you don’t have the patience to take care of someone for too long without getting angry.” Maybe she knows this is about Dimitri; maybe she doesn’t. But Bernadetta’s words and cutting too close to the point. “You can’t  _ make _ someone get help, but you can make sure they don’t have to do it alone.”

She falls quiet again. Lets Felix turn inwards and think, bristling at her words and trying to puzzle out what this all means for him. For Dimitri. 

He hates Dimitri.

He doesn’t hate Dimitri.

He hates sloppy drunk, mumbling pathetic Dimitri. He hates him because it hurts Felix too, but no, he doesn’t have the patience to do this forever, and if he tries they’ll just both end up hurt. Or worse. 

It’s nearing 7 A.M. when Bernadetta starts losing focus, yawning more than drawing, rubbing at her tired eyes. Felix walks out of the studio with her, while the rest of the campus comes to life, slow and drowsy, but more activity than he knows Bernadetta likes to be around. 

He hates Dimitri.

He doesn’t hate Dimitri.

He walks home to a quiet apartment, and either Dimitri is passed out or he's left, and Felix doesn’t want to check and find out, only cares about not having to see him. Not having to speak. Tired as he is, Felix still can’t sleep. He just lays down in a quiet room, blinds closed against the morning sun, and thinks. 

What the hell is he supposed to do.

* * *

Dimitri is easy enough to avoid.

Felix knows his habits and his schedule, the kind of hours he keeps and where he likes to go. They’ve known each other long enough for that. Felix knows him well enough for that. 

Come Monday and classes, it’s even easier. He can leave early, study in the library, go to class, stay late. He can avoid Dimitri’s usual haunts, the places he likes to go when he can be bothered to go out at all. He can creep back home and close the door to his room and keep the lights off and stay quiet, so as not to invite any knocks on his door. Dimitri is Dimitri. And Dimitri likes to apologize for every imagined slight, every possibility of getting in the way or what he might have done wrong, all while ignoring the massive cause of tension between them all the while. Refusing to acknowledge what has made Felix so angry with him in the first place. But if Dimitri can’t puzzle it out with that big, straightforward brain of his, Felix doesn’t have the patience to tell him. Dimitri is on his own. 

He’s on his own all week. And Felix can keep it up as long as this takes, even if he knows deep down that he’s acting like a child. Like when him and Glenn fought and he’d run away to cry in private or-

_ (to find Dimitri and-) _

And then he’d refuse to speak to Glenn for as long as he could stand. Which usually wasn’t very long at all. But with so much practice, the Felix of now has become somewhat of an expert on distancing himself from problems. 

The studio, with Bernadetta, is a common escape, but he can only hover by her for so long before she starts to get twitchy. Ingrid, and her apartment on the other side of campus is a cozy and welcome escape. Even with the risk he might run into Dimitri there- or worse, that Ingrid might bring him up and try to talk. There’s Dorothea to contend with too, and she is as relentless as a dog with a bone when she knows he’s stuck on something, and has a way of needling him to get it out. He doesn’t know how Ingrid can live with it, but who is he to talk. She’s never asked him how he can stand living with Dimitri. 

By the end of the week he’s relieved and quick to accept the offer from Sylvain to come over. Felix’s irritation with him has calmed down enough that he’d rather deal with Sylvain and his potential oversharing about Claude, than have to exist in the strange apartment of silence with Dimitri, where he can hear nothing but the sounds of him walking, moving from room to room, beyond Felix’s four walls and closed door. 

Not a party. Just a movie. And probably drinks, because Sylvain is still Sylvain, but  _ because _ Sylvain is Sylvain, Felix knows deep talks and serious discussions can be avoided with little to know effort. 

“I didn’t think you’d actually come!” is how Sylvain greets him at the door, easy smile on his face, perpetually unbothered by Felix’s scowl. 

“Don’t make me regret it,” he says back, and Sylvain just laughs at his words in that infuriating way he has. They walk in through the narrow entryway, straight through the tiny kitchen where Sylvain asks Felix if he wants a drink.

“Beer? Water? Anything?”

“Yeah, sure,” Felix says, settling on a beer and telling Sylvain as much. 

“I’ll grab it, go ahead into the living room,” Sylvain tells him, still smiling and full of charm. Maybe he still knows Felix is full of spines and he’s on thin ice after last weekend, but it doesn’t matter. Felix goes on without him, intending to take his usual spot at the end of the couch.

And he stops. Stops dead in the doorway staring in, because someone is already there. Dimitri is already there, waiting in the room alone, TV dark and no one to keep him company while Sylvain was off playing host. And  _ pretending _ like he hadn’t set a trap.

There’s nowhere to go. And nowhere to hide, nothing to do but stand there stupid in the few split seconds it takes for Dimitri to notice him standing there, to look in Felix’s direction and pin him with nothing more than a look. 

It’s a look that’s hopeful at first, but falls fast and turns sour as much as Dimitri tries to hide it. Felix has known him too long to not be able to read all his moods and every subtle expression that crosses his face. But Felix can’t read his mind.

“Sylvain didn’t tell you I’d be here, did he.”

There’s nothing accusatory in Dimitri’s voice, much as it’s a little sullen and more than a little dejected. Of course, because it’s been painfully obvious that Felix has been avoiding him at all costs, and Dimitri likes to take everything and spin it around until it’s his fault. A personal, moral failing on his end. Something to beat himself up about. 

“No,” Felix says, “he didn’t.”

The air is so thick between them Felix is having trouble breathing it down, and Dimitri, after that moment when he looked up to find Felix there, has since resumed looking down at his hands, hunched over on the couch. What to say. Where to even  _ start _ .

“I’ll go,” Dimitri says and stands up, Felix still too caught up to decide if that’s what he really wants. If he really wants Dimitri to go, or if he wants to cling onto him and make him stay. 

Words die in the back of his throat, now dry, cracking, while Dimitri walks past him, no more comments to make. Sylvain, always having the worst possible timing, choses that moment to appear in the doorway, smile plastered on his face and two bottles in his hands, just in time to see Dimitri brush past him too. 

No surprised protest from Sylvain stops him, and he’s left standing there looking surprised and a little stupid, not knowing what do to, but soon enough he turns to Felix, fixing him with a hard stare. 

“Really?  _ Really? _ ”

Felix is pissed and not in the mood for this. Not for the surprise attack on him, and not for Sylvain’s indignance about it. 

“You could have warned me,” Felix spits at him, but Sylvain doesn’t back down.

“So what, then you wouldn’t have come?” Felix rubs his face while Sylvain keeps talking. “He knows you’re avoiding him, you know. He doesn’t even know what he did  _ wrong _ .”

_ Everything _ .

That’s not fair and Felix knows it, but he’s upset. Upset about all of it all over again, not just the party, not just Dimitri getting drunk but  _ everything _ , even all the things he’s done himself, but Dimitri is ten times the easier target for his anger.

“You want to cut ties with Dimitri? Fine,” Sylvain says, surprisingly stern and commanding compared to how lackadaisical he usually pretends to be. “But you better at least tell  _ him _ about it, instead of just being an ass.” 

Felix doesn’t like admitting when Sylvain is right and he’s wrong, will avoid doing so whenever he can help it.

Sylvain’s right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ms bernadetta von art student is getting a little test run here before i finally write her a fic of her own

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twit @nonethelasttime


End file.
